"Cheap Chinese goods have little to do with a government that wantonly wastes money whenever and wherever it can. "
Why should anybody care? The money they are wasting today won't even be backed by labor or any other resources for six generations in the future. Nobody living today will be held accountable, and except for aristocratic families, their names will not even be known by their great-great-great grandchildren.
Well, In my dystopian society, being elected to office would be something one would try to avoid. You would be stripped of your name, assets, status, etc., and you would live comfortably, but on a subsitence income while you served your duty. If called, you would faithfully serve the nation because built into the system would be very horrible penalties for doing otherwise.
So you could avoid being called to service by being a criminal, mentally ill, or a failure at business, that sort of thing. Your choice. But NO ONE would ever be drawn to public office out of greed or seeking a venue for corruption. Think "jury duty" but on a much bigger scale, bundled with a system of enforcement and check/balance akin to a military draft.
Okay so my idea isn't developed enough for even a short story, let alone a real solution:-)
The thing that would bother me about this arrangement, is that someone with *decades* less experience than I have, and with entirely less financial stake in the company than I have, would have a higher level of authority than I.
Well that's the risk you take. You might get a thank you note on company letterhead, or you might get a subpoena, on the same company's letterhead but from the Office of General Counsel.
If you are willing to take that risk, this article does not apply to you.
If the risk aversion makes you sit on the information rather than release it anonymously, that's also your choice, of course, and your own personal ethos guides your actions.
LOL! Newspapers and TV stations pass off the work of others without specific attributions all the time. Whether they paid for the privilege or not is no issue. If a "blogger" is to be accused of copyright infringement, it's a civil matter to be taken up by whoever wishes to claim damages. Only the copyright holder can do that.
Use one of the myriad anonymous methods of reporting.
This separates those with a legitimate concern for making the information public, from those who want compensation or other credit for making the report. It also ensures immunity from persecution or prosecution.
There is no credibility issue, since any report of this nature must be independently verifiable anyway.
So there, the problem is solved, except for those whose only purpose of revealing information is in order to receive something in return, and to hell with them.
"I'm happy the library works for you. It's worth $15/month for me to be able to rent music naked:)."
Oh come on. You're in Portland. Oregon is one of the few places where it's legal for women to go, e.g., to the library topless... That's a start towards "naked" anyway...
Until the Monkees decided they could go it alone, against the advice of their PR folks, and decided that they would write thier own music (instead of the songwriters they had like Carole King and Neil Diamond), they were bigger, in the US, than the Rolling Stones...
When a news story breaks, and you see a report raw from a wire service feed, watch as practically every news outlet copies and pastes that report verbatim.
I see viruses every day in my spam folder, but other than email delivery of viruses that are targeted at a specific mailer on a specific OS, where do you find viruses?
>There's a big difference between a bunch of hippies in a "Local theater group" and >IBM/Oracle/Sun/Apple teaming up and colluding to undercut a Microsoft product.
There is, but the doctrine of "equal protection of the law" makes it difficult to make the case to support your premise, before a judge.
The independent theatre group is still expected to follow the law. Free speech and free assembly doesn't exclude copyright law, and doesn't eliminate the fire chief's authority to limit the number of people in a building, and so on.
The theatre group isn't going to be slapped with an antitrust injunction, and the tech corporations are not going to be arrested for public nudity or for violating some local rule about hiring a union electrictian to plug in stage lights.
"Am I the only one who remembers Watergate? When Nixon wiretapped it was illegal, the law HAS NOT CHANGED."
I remember Watergate. And I clearly remember that the public perception of the hotel breakin was not widely understood to be significant until it was shown that it was a catalyst for a high-level coverup. Today, people don't seem to understand the significance of the Valerie Plame affair, and I suspect they will not, until investigating the subsequent coverup becomes a congressional priority.
As for the phone tapping, it's a crime. It is still a crime even if the President of the United States declares it not to be. So who tapped phones, and for what purpose? We cannot take this case straight from the evidence on the table to an impeachment hearing, as it sits.
Also, I don't understand why Qwest is getting a free pass on this. Yes, they refused to participate in a government conspiracy to deprive people of their constitutional right to not have evidence gathered against them without a warrant and suspicion of a specific crime. But while they refused to participate, they still helped cover it up.
Remember Moussaoui? His crime was knowing about the conspiracy and failing to report it.
As far as I'm concerned, the executives at Qwest should face the exact same punishment, because they have committed precisely the same crime.
I had been looking for fanless video cards for a while. I still wish I could find cheap fanless cards, but these high perf cards look pretty good. The problem is, if you're dissipating a lot of heat it still has to be extracted. I'd rather not generate the heat at all. I realize all you guys are gamers and video watchers, but I have an application that really just needs a 1280x1024 desktop and silence is a far more important requirement than graphic performance.
On one of these boxes I just took an OEM card with a Radeon chipset and simply removed the fan. I didn't update the heatsink or anything. I didn't know if it was going to cook or what, but I didn't care -- it was a $15 card to begin with. Well, that was nearly 5 years ago and that card still work fine.
In another box that I was much more serious about, I used a Sapphire (also Radeon-based) card, which was fanless. Very nice $50, 128MB card. I'd buy it again but the current ones have fans.
As for the high perf cards like the Asus and GB in your links, I wonder if they will just sit there generating heat that still would require fans to get the heat off the mainboard and away from the case?
"...would be to ask why someone would want to use the nvidia drivers for Linux in the first place. In most cases that would mean playing games."
For me, it's because I need their 2D XServer which is the only way I can get the resolution I need at the refresh rate I need. Also bundled with the NVidia X driver was the driver for my sound card and my disc controller.
"Try the kernel w/o any graphics drivers (just VGA Console) and use vesa (not vesafb!) drivers for X. Worked for my roommate, even at 1152x1024."
That's an okay compromise for installing I guess, but then my consoles are 80 column, which I cannot stand. I *know* I can run xterms or whatever, but I also want the consoles to be decent. I'm a heavy user of the console and if I can't get 160x64 I feel like I'm in the 1980s.
In order to achieve this I usually have to get either the NV or Radeon display driver to work. My experience with NV has not been bad, but I did have to download something that couldn't be bundled with my distribution for legal reasons (the key point of the article). I had to do without 2.6 for most of its development however, because the ATI drivers in the kernel were a complete failure for either of my Radeon devices.
Even when things "work", I still find annoyances, like the setup screen getting into a mode where I have to guess what it's printing on the screen because it's not displaying I considered that an improvement over what it did before, which was to put an 80x25 screen in the font that would normally do 160x64, but to only put that 80x25 piece in the upper left corner of the display.
This was supported hardware and a driver that was not tagged as "development", and I'm just glad it was a problem only for me, and not for anyone that I was trying to persuade to run linux professionally.
"By your lights, no one other than somebody with a Ph.D. in physics is qualified to discuss whether a curve ball really breaks."
Um, no. I'm saying I would prefer the final analysis of a nuclear plant containment system to be done by a physicist as opposed to getting a random sports fan's opinion.
Slashdot Mirror
"Cheap Chinese goods have little to do with a government that wantonly wastes money whenever and wherever it can.
"
Why should anybody care? The money they are wasting today won't even be backed by labor or any other resources for six generations in the future. Nobody living today will be held accountable, and except for aristocratic families, their names will not even be known by their great-great-great grandchildren.
>So what then can be done. . ?
Well, In my dystopian society, being elected to office would be something one would try to avoid. You would be stripped of your name, assets, status, etc., and you would live comfortably, but on a subsitence income while you served your duty. If called, you would faithfully serve the nation because built into the system would be very horrible penalties for doing otherwise.
So you could avoid being called to service by being a criminal, mentally ill, or a failure at business, that sort of thing. Your choice. But NO ONE would ever be drawn to public office out of greed or seeking a venue for corruption. Think "jury duty" but on a much bigger scale, bundled with a system of enforcement and check/balance akin to a military draft.
Okay so my idea isn't developed enough for even a short story, let alone a real solution
I'm not getting how your secretary and the post office have higher authority than you.
Does your secretary get to edit content after you've signed the letter? Does the post office get to decide what mail is, and is not, delivered?
Were all these people hired on your authority, paid out of your budget, and working according to a policy you wrote?
The thing that would bother me about this arrangement, is that someone with *decades* less experience than I have, and with entirely less financial stake in the company than I have, would have a higher level of authority than I.
If the government gets to decide what is and what is not reasonable, nothing in this argument matters one bit.
I can't WAIT to see what happens when all this authority gets handed over to the opposition party. Surely Mr. Bush et al have considered that?
"If you can get enough energy out of the deal to prevent just one war for oil, then it'll be worth it.
"
Worth what to whom? The people who stand to gain from wars would find it worthwhile to do anything in their power to stop this technology.
You people speak of the Euro as though it's existed long enough to make claims about it's stability.
>After all, you Americans are borrowing $3 mil. a DAY of the rest of the world...
Who is the bigger loser? The deadbeat who borrows more than he can ever repay, or the chump who keeps lending to him?
Well that's the risk you take. You might get a thank you note on company letterhead, or you might get a subpoena, on the same company's letterhead but from the Office of General Counsel.
If you are willing to take that risk, this article does not apply to you.
If the risk aversion makes you sit on the information rather than release it anonymously, that's also your choice, of course, and your own personal ethos guides your actions.
LOL! Newspapers and TV stations pass off the work of others without specific attributions all the time. Whether they paid for the privilege or not is no issue. If a "blogger" is to be accused of copyright infringement, it's a civil matter to be taken up by whoever wishes to claim damages. Only the copyright holder can do that.
Use one of the myriad anonymous methods of reporting.
This separates those with a legitimate concern for making the information public, from those who want compensation or other credit for making the report. It also ensures immunity from persecution or prosecution.
There is no credibility issue, since any report of this nature must be independently verifiable anyway.
So there, the problem is solved, except for those whose only purpose of revealing information is in order to receive something in return, and to hell with them.
So you're saying a student who buys his term papers instead of writing them ought to be in the clear?
"I'm happy the library works for you. It's worth $15/month for me to be able to rent music naked :)."
Oh come on. You're in Portland. Oregon is one of the few places where it's legal for women to go, e.g., to the library topless... That's a start towards "naked" anyway...
Until the Monkees decided they could go it alone, against the advice of their PR folks, and decided that they would write thier own music (instead of the songwriters they had like Carole King and Neil Diamond), they were bigger, in the US, than the Rolling Stones...
The larger issue is the information monoculture and the single point of control that is an artifact of the scheme.
When a news story breaks, and you see a report raw from a wire service feed, watch as practically every news outlet copies and pastes that report verbatim.
I see viruses every day in my spam folder, but other than email delivery of viruses that are targeted at a specific mailer on a specific OS, where do you find viruses?
>There's a big difference between a bunch of hippies in a "Local theater group" and
>IBM/Oracle/Sun/Apple teaming up and colluding to undercut a Microsoft product.
There is, but the doctrine of "equal protection of the law" makes it difficult to make the case to support your premise, before a judge.
The independent theatre group is still expected to follow the law. Free speech and free assembly doesn't exclude copyright law, and doesn't eliminate the fire chief's authority to limit the number of people in a building, and so on.
The theatre group isn't going to be slapped with an antitrust injunction, and the tech corporations are not going to be arrested for public nudity or for violating some local rule about hiring a union electrictian to plug in stage lights.
>Local theater group doing show without pay (professional actors)
Union issues can lead to problems with law enforcement. Free Speech is one thing,
but theatre occupancy is another.
>Volunteers at a soup kitchen (the local cafe)
I have personally been threatened with arrest, and I know many people who have been arrested, for serving free food to homeless people.
>Laywers taking cases pro bono (other lawyers)
Definitely there is a system of rules here, that carry the force of law.
>Doctors providing free medical aid (other doctors)
Rules, with the force of law, govern this.
>Any number of arts and crafts that people sell at less than real cost on fairs and the
>like
You must not go to many fairs
>Every local band who can't make a living out of it but plays anyway
Copyright, ASCAP, noise ordinances and busking permits...
>Every sort of artist who doesn't make a living out of it, but does it anyway
>Every sort of "scratch-an-itch" programmer who doesn't make a living out of it, but does >it anyway
Patents, export controls...
"Is someone crying becuase new software has new features, and they aren't going to port it to previous versions? huh?"
New features? This is a new feature in the sense that a power tool that pulls your thumbs off has new and improved safety features.
"Am I the only one who remembers Watergate? When Nixon wiretapped it was illegal, the law HAS NOT CHANGED."
I remember Watergate. And I clearly remember that the public perception of the hotel breakin was not widely understood to be significant until it was shown that it was a catalyst for a high-level coverup. Today, people don't seem to understand the significance of the Valerie Plame affair, and I suspect they will not, until investigating the subsequent coverup becomes a congressional priority.
As for the phone tapping, it's a crime. It is still a crime even if the President of the United States declares it not to be. So who tapped phones, and for what purpose? We cannot take this case straight from the evidence on the table to an impeachment hearing, as it sits.
Also, I don't understand why Qwest is getting a free pass on this. Yes, they refused to participate in a government conspiracy to deprive people of their constitutional right to not have evidence gathered against them without a warrant and suspicion of a specific crime. But while they refused to participate, they still helped cover it up.
Remember Moussaoui? His crime was knowing about the conspiracy and failing to report it.
As far as I'm concerned, the executives at Qwest should face the exact same punishment, because they have committed precisely the same crime.
I had been looking for fanless video cards for a while. I still wish I could find cheap fanless cards, but these high perf cards look pretty good. The problem is, if you're dissipating a lot of heat it still has to be extracted. I'd rather not generate the heat at all. I realize all you guys are gamers and video watchers, but I have an application that really just needs a 1280x1024 desktop and silence is a far more important requirement than graphic performance.
On one of these boxes I just took an OEM card with a Radeon chipset and simply removed the fan. I didn't update the heatsink or anything. I didn't know if it was going to cook or what, but I didn't care -- it was a $15 card to begin with. Well, that was nearly 5 years ago and that card still work fine.
In another box that I was much more serious about, I used a Sapphire (also Radeon-based) card, which was fanless. Very nice $50, 128MB card. I'd buy it again but the current ones have fans.
As for the high perf cards like the Asus and GB in your links, I wonder if they will just sit there generating heat that still would require fans to get the heat off the mainboard and away from the case?
"...would be to ask why someone would want to use the nvidia drivers for Linux in the first place. In most cases that would mean playing games."
For me, it's because I need their 2D XServer which is the only way I can get the resolution I need at the refresh rate I need. Also bundled with the NVidia X driver was the driver for my sound card and my disc controller.
"Try the kernel w/o any graphics drivers (just VGA Console) and use vesa (not vesafb!) drivers for X. Worked for my roommate, even at 1152x1024."
That's an okay compromise for installing I guess, but then my consoles are 80 column, which I cannot stand. I *know* I can run xterms or whatever, but I also want the consoles to be decent. I'm a heavy user of the console and if I can't get 160x64 I feel like I'm in the 1980s.
In order to achieve this I usually have to get either the NV or Radeon display driver to work. My experience with NV has not been bad, but I did have to download something that couldn't be bundled with my distribution for legal reasons (the key point of the article). I had to do without 2.6 for most of its development however, because the ATI drivers in the kernel were a complete failure for either of my Radeon devices.
Even when things "work", I still find annoyances, like the setup screen getting into a mode where I have to guess what it's printing on the screen because it's not displaying I considered that an improvement over what it did before, which was to put an 80x25 screen in the font that would normally do 160x64, but to only put that 80x25 piece in the upper left corner of the display.
This was supported hardware and a driver that was not tagged as "development", and I'm just glad it was a problem only for me, and not for anyone that I was trying to persuade to run linux professionally.
"By your lights, no one other than somebody with a Ph.D. in physics is qualified to discuss whether a curve ball really breaks."
Um, no. I'm saying I would prefer the final analysis of a nuclear plant containment system to be done by a physicist as opposed to getting a random sports fan's opinion.